CROWN OF SILENCE: FORBIDDEN BLOODLINE

LYRA ANDREA SILVERTONGUE

It’s not supposed to matter.

This is the lie I’ve lived with for eighteen years, until mother told me I’d be attending the werewolf academy, marrying a stranger, and asking no questions.

She calls it destiny.

I call it a cage.

Either way, the truth she refuses to give to me awaits behind those iron gates.

“WELCOME TO GRIMHOWL ACADEMY.”

My blood pulses thick and heavy in my veins as I read the words out of those metal bars.

Black clouds brushes past the edges of my sight when I skim through the tagline on the bars that makes me tumble forward in the back seat.

“Death waits all who seek entry.”

Cold slams against my skin. A shiver runs down my spine.

“Are you alright, Lyra?” Mum’s voice breezes past my ears, all while giving me that look that tells me she worried about me, and at the same time couldn’t give two cents about me.

“I’m alright, mum,” I move my gaze away from those emerald-green eyes, back to the death-note that almost took away my consciousness, and…

“What in the sevens?”

My voice breaks out of my throat, the words leaving my lips before I can slam the breaks on them.

“What’s the matter, love?”

Mum asks, and I swear just a second ago I’d read the tagline in a perfect-worded English. Now it says something in a language I cannot understand.

“Duath I’lhuth hain a thand.”

“Nothing, mum,” I respond, as the massive gates opens and our car rolls in.

“I know how inconvenient this is for you, little Rose,” her hot, steamy breath brushes against the back of my ear as she pulls closer towards me. “But this is for your best interest.”

Best interest?

The words prick my eardrums and hammers against my skull so hard my head aches.

This woman makes me want to wrap my fingers in her hair and smash her face against the windshield.

Best interest would be treating me like your own flesh and blood, rather than some privilege cunt who’s lucky the algorithm fell on her that day.

My golden-green eyes are hard on her emerald ones, searching for multiples ways I can kill her and get away with murder.

“We’ve arrived.”

The driver at the front seat breaks up the heat, and I tear my gaze away from her.

I’m about to step out of the car when her hand suddenly wraps around my wrist.

“Tell no none who you truly are, Lyra,” the sound of her voice coils low and deep, and her eyes burrow into mine. “If word ever got out that you are…”

“I know, mum,” I cut in, saving myself the repeated lecture. “No one will know who I really am.”

I slam the door shut and watch the black Mercedes struts itself out through the gates, and something tells me I won’t be seeing her again for quite a long while.

I turn to welcome myself into my newly found hellhole when halfway into the turn, a red-head smashes into me, dropping me butt first into the floor.

“Watch where you’re going, creepy,” she fires and walks away like I’m at fault. Normally, I’d have taught her a manner or two, but the yellow glint in her eyes is enough to tell me she’s gotten her wolf.

And for a wolf-less girl of eighteen, that means getting into a certain body bag with your throat ripped out of your neck.

Goddess, how do I survive in a school filled with different creatures, without a wolf?

Most people get their wolf as early as sixteen, and late bloomers by eighteen. But here I am, four months into eighteen and still… wolf-less.